Responses to the Prosecution of Whistle Blowers

August 2, 2013

NPR, mistakenly still identified as a liberal news source when in fact for the past decade at least it has been so worried about losing its funding that it has bent over backwards to accommodate governmental and corporate spins on the news, did a focus on Manning that sought to reduce his courageous acts to personal psychopathology. This is typical of the way the lamestream media–in bed with the military, the homeland security and spying teams, the government, and the corporate elite–either ignores or demeans acts of resistance to the American economic, political and cultural empire. That way of dealing with the opposition to the path of the elites has been very effective, though it is also immoral, intellectually dishonest, and pathetic.

Tikkun and the NSP–Network of Spiritual Progressives’ response was to buy an ad in the New York Times to allow ordinary citizens to call upon President Obama to stop prosecuting whistle blowers. It’s not too late to sign and donate so we can buy space in other media to let our fellow countrymen know that there is a way to stand up publicly against all this. Go to www.tikkun.org/STOP and read the letter to Obama, sign it, and donate money so that we can advertise it!

Meanwhile, you can read some other voices that have appeared in other media with a similar approach though without the activism that Tikkun and the NSP take. So read on, but don’t forget to sign the letter at www.tikkun.org/STOP. If you are having trouble doing so for technical reasons, contact operations.tikkun@gmail.com or craig@reachandteach.org.

In his book, Propaganda, published in 1928, Edward Bernays wrote: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.

Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

The American nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays invented the term “public relations” as a euphemism for state propaganda. He warned that an enduring threat to the invisible government was the truth-teller and an enlightened public.

In 1971, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg leaked US government files known as The Pentagon Papers, revealing that the invasion of Vietnam was based on systematic lying. Four years later, Frank Church conducted sensational hearings in the US Senate: one of the last flickers of American democracy. These laid bare the full extent of the invisible government: the domestic spying and subversion and warmongering by intelligence and “security” agencies and the backing they received from big business and the media, both conservative and liberal. Read more

The verdict from a military judge does not diminish the huge moral stature of whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Next month, I will be proud to deliver a petition to the Nobel Committee in Oslo with a simple message from more than 100,000 signers: “I urge you to award the Peace Prize to Bradley Manning.”

Thanks to Manning, vast troves of information have become public knowledge, making possible more informed debate about war and peace. For instance, he leaked the now-infamous “collateral murder” video, with a soundtrack of chilling banter as US servicemen in a pair of gunships fired on civilians in Baghdad. Read more

Norman Solomon is author of War Made Easy, founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and co-founder of RootsAction.org.

In 2009 the American ambassador to Tunisia spent the evening at the home of Mohamed Sakher el-Materi, the president’s son-in-law. By any standards the dinner was lavish – yogurt and ice cream were flown in from St Tropez – and the home was opulent.

In a cable, made public by WikiLeaks, the diplomat wrote: “The house was recently renovated and includes an infinity pool … there are ancient artefacts everywhere: Roman columns, frescos and even a lion’s head from which water pours into the pool. Materi insisted the pieces are real.” By Tunisian standards it was particularly obscene. El-Materi owned a tiger and fed it four chickens a day. Read more

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One Response to Responses to the Prosecution of Whistle Blowers

Yasin Samadada
August 12, 2013 at 10:04 pm

I voted for Obama and he is worst then Bush now.
At lest, Bush did what he said but Obama did what he was against.